The Spencer Family by Spencer Charles

Author:Spencer, Charles [Spencer, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

13. Honest Jack Althorp

George John’s will was left in the hands of a sole executor, his eldest son, John Charles, now Third Earl Spencer, but best-known to history as Lord Althorp, which was the courtesy title he held for over fifty of his sixty-three years.

It was fortunate for the succeeding generations of Spencers that such an able and decent man came to be head of the family at such a difficult time, for George John left behind him an estate valued for probate purposes at under £160,000, with mortgages of over £300,000. Out of this, £20,000 each had to be found for three of the younger children, and the Second Earl’s house at Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, together with all its contents, was left to a younger son, Frederick.

A lesser man than Lord Althorp would have balked at the hopelessness of it all, but he had shown himself throughout his life to be a man of the strongest moral character for whom the concept of duty was the overriding consideration, whatever the consequences. Whether as a son, a politician or as a pillar of the community, Althorp was rock solid.

George John had been an attentive father, compared to many of his contemporary grandees. Throughout ‘Jack’ Althorp’s childhood, he recorded the boy’s small triumphs and progresses, keeping the ageing Georgiana Spencer up to date on the development of her eldest Spencer grandson. Althorp showed a fine practical intellect at an early age, and George John proudly reported in October 1788: ‘Jack really improves in his reading and has got a very accurate notion of the general Geography of Europe — all the countries of which he can point out and call by their names on the great Globe in the Library.’

By then, Jack had already sat, dressed in a page boy’s outfit, for the family friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds — he was, in old age, to claim that he was the only person to have been painted by Reynolds, and also to have been photographed — in one of the artist’s most successful depictions of a child. Looking at the portrait today, dominating the Library at Althorp, the sky-blue sash cutting through the surrounding mellow tones of the book spines, it is possible to see that this is not a soul at ease with the finery into which it had been born; the sensitive face looks trapped between the dramatic sweep of an ostentatious hat and the fussy luxuriance of the silky clothes.

Jack Althorp was born and largely brought up at Spencer House, but was always at his happiest in the countryside. He came to hate the sophisticated urban living that his parents indulged in at their private London palace, but he understood that his father’s political obligations necessitated long spells in the capital. Jack’s education was started at Spencer House. He was taught to read there by a Swiss footman, and it was there that his tutor, Samuel Herrick, prepared him for boarding school.

At the age of eight, he was sent to Harrow.

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